Sir, - The campaign of sectarian murder over the past fortnight by the military wings of Orangeism demonstrates again that unionism is inherently sectarian. After the first IRA ceasefire collapsed, Sinn Fein was subjected to a torrent of excoriation for months. At present, however, the UDP has incurred no such sustained obloquy. The UDP exists only notionally as a political party. Yet we do not hear those who were quite happy to use "Sinn Fein/IRA" as a pejorative term refer to "UDP/UFF" in the same venomous tone.
There is an unwillingness in certain polite circles in the South and the UK to accept the distressing fact that unionists murder Catholics whenever the latter organise for political equality. That is the principle which has sustained unionist hegemony. It receives a public, unapologetically sectarian airing during the marching season every year.
Loyalist murderers make a pretence of killing "legitimate targets", but the reality is that they kill Catholics because they are Catholics, not for any other reason. And let us also face the fact that support for killing Catholics is entrenched in the psyche of certain loyalist communities. How else can one explain the easy identification of Catholic targets? What is happening at the moment is a throwback to the various campaigns down the years aimed at terrorising Catholics into submission.
These are unpleasant political facts. Where else on earth could a group like the UFF release a statement describing the murder of Catholic workmen as part of its military response and still expect its political mouthpiece, the UDP, to be taken seriously? But that is the nature of the North. Catholics are a commodity on which unionism places no value.
If we recall the Harryville "protests", one has to ask what other part of Europe would allow worshippers to be hounded from their place of worship. Does anyone believe that it could have happened in Britain? Of course not. Would Muslims be allowed to surround a synagogue, or Jews a mosque in the fashion that loyalists besieged Harryville church? Would Catholics have been permitted to do the same? it's too fanciful to consider.
Who knows if we are in an impossible situation. But as long as unionism is unwilling to shed its sectarian manifestations, Catholics will continue to be murdered. -Yours, etc.,
John Harper,
Trim Road, Navan, Co Meath.